Archive for August, 2005
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31 Aug 2005
Eris (my webhost) is doing some rolling OS updates, and I’m having some problems with the front page of Plutor.org. The blog portion still works, but the “links” will be missing, as will my most recent Flickr photos. I’ll get it working as soon as I have a chance.
Update 6 Sep: Fixed. Perl wasn’t finding my custom modules, but now I’m not sure how it ever saw them.
Update 7 Sep: I’ve updated to MT 3.2, and I’m hoping that this will simplify some stuff. I’m going to be doing some ongoing cleanups over the next few days when I get the time, like making a master RSS feed, and maybe moving moblog stuff to a dedicated MT blog, so that it can be commented on.
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29 Aug 2005
I’m at Red Hat training this week in Westford, MA. The water bottles here have the logo on them, along with the following in tiny print: “Free (as in water)”. Geek humor at its best. (Read about Gratis versus Libre for an explanation of the joke.)
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18 Aug 2005
This morning, on the way to work, my car’s extended warranty expired. I’ve driven 72,000 miles since I bought it on 26 April 2003. In those 845 days, I’ve averaged 85.2 miles per day. Every time I calculated it, I got about 27 miles per gallon, which means I’ve used roughly 2,666 gallons of gasoline, or 3.1 gallons per day. I filled up my 20-gallon tank at least 133 times — although probably more like 150 times (once every 5.6 days) since I usually didn’t wait for it to empty completely. When I purchased my car, a full tank of gas would have cost me about $34 (roughly $1.70 per gallon in Waterbury). Now, that same tank costs me $52 ($2.60 per gallon).
Based on my rough eyeballing, I’ve probably spent approximately $5,000 on gas since I purchased my car.Update: Wow, my eyeballing was ridiculously accurate. Based on some real historical gas prices, I’ve spent $4954.02 on gas.
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11 Aug 2005
I love math. Not just complex math, but arithmetic, too. I simply adore mathematical shortcuts. That’s why I spent the last couple of days finding shortcuts for divisibility tests:
- 3 – Sum of digits is divisible by 3.
- 4 – If the last two digits (tens and ones places) are divisible by 4. You can simplify this test by subtracting multiples of 2 from the tens place.
- 7 – Remove the digit in the ones place. Double it, and subtract that from the remaining number. Repeat until you have a one-digit number. If that number is 7, 0, or -7, the original number is divisible by 7.
- 8 – If the last three digits are divisible by 8. You can simplify this test by subtracting multiples of 2 from the hundreds place, and multiples of 4 from the tens place.
- 9 – Sum of digits is divisible by 9.
- 11 – If the alternating sum of the digits (first digit, minus second digit, plus third digit, etc) is divisible by 11.
- 13 – Remove the digit in the ones place. Multiply that digit by 4, and add that to the remaining number. Repeat until you have a number less than 40. If that number is 13, 26, or 39, the original number is divisible by 13.
The rules for 7 and 13 can easily be extended to just about any number under 100 (and, in fact, the rules listed here for 3, 9, and 11 are simple variants). As long as you understand how those ones work, you don’t even really need to memorize anything.
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2 Aug 2005
Have you ever wondered why grain alcohol like Everclear or Graves are only 95% ethanol (190 proof)? I have. I assumed it was an ROI thing. My theory figured the increased cost to distill the alcohol to such a purity would force up the price, which customers would not bear. Apparently, there’s a different reason altogether, and it’s a chemistry thing.
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1 Aug 2005
Recently I finished reading The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I had been reluctant to pick it up. The cover and the summary on the back gave me this dizzy “romance novel” feeling, but my father-in-law recommended it. Finally, when I hit a thin area in my reading list (and M essentially forced me to read the first chapter), I decided to give it a chance. Five pages later, I was completely and irreversibly hooked. That statement is NOT an exaggeration.
The story starts quickly, and the first couple of chapters give you the goose-bumpy willies when some weird stuff happens. The characters are totally believable even if their situation is (literally) incredible. The book started off very engrossing, and as it got more serious and intense, I couldn’t stop reading. I averaged more than 100 pages a day for a week, the first time I’ve done that with a book in a long time.
Here’s my suggestion: go to the library or the book store. Read the first five pages. The book will either purchase itself, or you will put it back. Oh, and don’t do any research into movie deals until you’ve finished the book, or you’ll be sorry.